Lockdown Effect? Data Reveals Minor Flattening of Covid-19 Growth Curve in India

New Delhi: Amid speculations over the nationwide lockdown being extended till April end, COVID-19 cases in India have seen a modest reduction in growth rate in the past one week.

According to data from John Hopkins Centre for Systems Science and Engineering’s (CSSE) on the current pandemic, India had 9,205 cases of coronavirus as of Sunday.

An analysis by Mudit Kapoor of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) and Brookings Institute’s Shamika Ravi has shown that India has witnessed a growth rate of 10 per cent over the past five days with total cases doubling every seven days, compared to cases doubling every four days in late March and early April.

The analysis also tries to gauge the severity of the situation, based on the growth rate of coronavirus cases before the lockdown i.e. doubling of cases every three days, had there been no lockdown in place.

According to its estimates, the country may have had over 50,000 cumulative Covid-19 cases if they would have continued to double every three days.

India’s compound daily growth rate (CDGR) has also seen a marginal decline to remain a little over 13 per cent at present. A significant and consistent fall in CDGR will signify a gradual containment of the spread of the virus and the number of cases.

Moreover, the analysis shows that the moving median of new confirmed cases over five days, which saw a sharp jump in the first week of April has remained stable at roughly 750 new cases every day. This figure hovered around 500 new confirmed cases at the start of the month.

Although the flattening of the growth curve is encouraging, India’s testing still remains low and, therefore, it will be premature to draw too many conclusions from the latest trend.

A total of 1,95,748 samples from 1,81,028 individuals have been tested as of Sunday, according to official data from the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR). In essence, India has conducted nearly 145 tests per million of the population, which is significantly low compared to other countries most affected by the new virus.